BloodHag, Burnout, and... Binsomnia. Insomnia.
A lot of stuff about loud interesting music and a little about tiny particles
This week’s show is about burnout and I have been hearing about it a lot since it came out. I feel like it’s an issue we’re just now waking up to.
A new study out of Oxford University says that 1 in 3 survivors of covid have some sort of mental health impairment even after the virus is gone. The main complaints are depression, anxiety, and insomnia. And while some of them could probably be blamed on the traumatic experience of dealing with a potentially virus during a pandemic, neurological conditions are also being explored.
In addition to the hallmark symptoms of Covid infection, such as fever, cough and shortness of breath, 25% of people experience symptoms related to their brain and nervous system, including dizziness, headache, debilitating fatigue and “brain fog” or cognitive impairment, which is trouble remembering, learning and concentrating. While symptoms tend to go away once someone recovers, some Covid survivors experience lasting long-term effects.
At this stage, researchers aren’t sure what the exact physiological mechanism is that’s driving the neurological and cognitive symptoms. One possible explanation? A study in the New England Journal of Medicine examined brain tissue from people who died from Covid and noticed a combination of inflammation and leaking blood vessels in the brain.
Coverage of the study, which examined the records of 230,000 people in the United States, on CNBC features something that is becoming a favorite trop of mine: Intentionally Vague Stock Photo Meant To Designate Mental Illness.
“What’s wrong with her? No one knows. It must be Mental Illness.”
- “But that’s not a diagnosis. What kind of mental illn—”
“Shhhh. It’s MENTAL ILLNESS.”
I got my second dose of vaccine this week and am now vaccinated. As with the first shot, I paid particular attention to the music being played in the clinic area at Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis. For the first shot, Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” followed by Toby Keith’s “whatever the song is when he says we’ll put a boot in your ass it’s the American way”. Only uniting theme there is hyperbole.
This time around it was Huey Lewis’s “If This Is It”, then “The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades” by Timbuk 3 and “99 Red Balloons”, English language version, by Nena. If there’s a theme, I missed it, but was of course dismayed that once again the deep cuts from the Nena catalog were ignored. I mean, why not play “Berufsjugendlich”? How about a little “Jegen Tag”? I do not know what I’m talking about.
I left the hospital euphoric and I don’t know if that was a reaction to the chemicals in the vaccine or a reaction to the chemicals being manufactured in my brain. The pandemic is not over, the effects of it will be with us through the lifetime of the youngest person to remember it, but in that moment I felt like progress was made. A while back, I had no show and was terrified of the virus. Progress has been made.
Speaking of that song I put up there, I don’t think Visqueen is a band anymore but I sure loved them when they were. I still hear from Rachel the singer/guitarist from time to time. I booked them to do a performance and interview at KUOW when I was there and they played so very much louder than the string quartets that generally played that station. It was freaking awesome.
Another band I had in one time was BloodHag. They were a punk band that was all about literacy and literature. Just loved books and made songs about books and authors and literary criticism. One of their albums was “Appetite for Deconstruction”. This is their 8 1/2 minute documentary, “The Faster You Go Deaf, the More Time You Have to Read.”
Man, I loved BloodHag. Often you can’t understand the lyrics because they are a loud punk/metal band.
I’ve lost the mental health thread on this edition of the newsletter a little bit. No matter. BloodHag!
Next Monday on the podcast: Open Mike Eagle! Yes, it was an easy booking because Mike is my friend but I’m not booking all my friends for Depresh Mode. I booked Mike because in the past year he’s had his tv show end, his marriage end, his tours canceled, and he took all that and made an album called Anime, Trauma Divorce. He eschews the Oxford comma but our friendship is strong enough to survive that, just barely.
We talked about this song, which is about the traumas we hand down:
Some people, I keep interviewing them because they keep having things to teach.
In case you missed it, some tiny little particle does not obey the laws of known science and the universe is full of the dang things and maybe they’re God or The Force.
The particle célèbre is the muon, which is akin to an electron but far heavier, and is an integral element of the cosmos. Dr. Polly and his colleagues — an international team of 200 physicists from seven countries — found that muons did not behave as predicted when shot through an intense magnetic field at Fermilab.
The aberrant behavior poses a firm challenge to the Standard Model, the suite of equations that enumerates the fundamental particles in the universe (17, at last count) and how they interact.
Oh!
It was a great episode. I work as an HR communications consultant and my clients (employers) are focusing a lot on mental health now, especially with May as mental health month coming up. Burnout is so relevant and actually affects companies' bottom lines so they really do need to dial in to it. I connected to Jennifer Moss on LinkedIn and am still trying to see if I can find someone to get me a copy of her report through HBR. Anyway, I just love your show, and even if I don't get a chance to listen to the episode it brings me calm and peace to know it's out there, if you can believe that. Knowing my people are being heard and seen goes a long way so THANK you so much. I do have to agree to disagree with you on the Oxford comma, though.